


We were born lost, but now, you are found

by girlyjuice



Category: Palm Springs (2020)
Genre: Gender, gender feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25658860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlyjuice/pseuds/girlyjuice
Summary: When you live in an infinite time loop, you find yourself gradually unmooring from every aspect of your identity that once mattered to you. The job you once held, and used to be good at. The house you once lived in, and used to love. Your name. Your gender.
Relationships: Nyles/Sarah
Comments: 8
Kudos: 44





	We were born lost, but now, you are found

When you live in an infinite time loop, you find yourself gradually unmooring from every aspect of your identity that once mattered to you. The job you once held, and used to be good at. The house you once lived in, and used to love. Your name.

But now Nyles can feel himself starting to float away from the gender he thought he was when this all started, and that’s certainly a new feeling. New feelings are in short supply in here.

It begins one morning (the thousandth? the ten thousandth? the millionth?) when, bored by Misty’s leg plonked down in front of him like it is every day, his eyes wander up toward her tiki-print silk robe, the leaf-green fronds entangling on a lavender-pink backdrop.

For the first time ever, in the history of _ever_ , he finds himself thinking, “What would I look like in that robe?”

New thoughts are deviations. Deviations are differences. Anything different is good.

This jumbled train of thought is what prompts him to pounce on Misty’s suitcase, once she’s sashayed out of their hotel room to go attend to her pre-wedding bridesmaid duties. It’s rife with sensuous, satiny garments he hasn’t paid much attention to in ages, chiefly because he hasn’t paid much attention to _Misty_ in ages. Why is it he knows exactly what’s in every present on the gift table at the wedding, and he knows the name of every guest who carries drugs in their pockets, but he doesn’t have the contents of Misty’s suitcase memorized?

Moreover, why did he never realize he’d look this good in pink sequins and tulle?

The mirror bounces his own image back at him, face echoing the bewilderment that’s been his baseline for eons, but body looking newly contoured, delightfully different. He plucks at the fabric near the bust, where it droops lethargically, and wonders if there’s a bra in that suitcase he could borrow for just a sec, and something he could pad it with…

And that’s when Sarah bursts into the room, staring at her phone. “Hey, I was looking on Google Maps and apparently there’s this psychic/mystic person who lives a few miles away; it’s a bit of a trek but I figure it’s worth a – WHOA! What the hell?”

It’s amazing how after all these eternities, Nyles can still feel shame from time to time.

“It’s nothing, I was just, uh, don’t worry about it,” he stammers, already tugging the salmon-hued spaghetti straps off his bony shoulders.

“No, you look kind of amazing, actually,” Sarah says, and Nyles can see in her slow-scanning eyes that she means it. She’s always had this bossy, brassy energy that made him feel cornered in a more feminine role, but suddenly now it clicks into place that maybe that’s why he likes her. Maybe that’s why he’s always liked her.

“I’ve fucked around with gender in here too,” Sarah says, plunking down on the bed and continuing to scroll idly through her stuffed-full notes app. (It resets at the end of every day and annoys Sarah to no end. Nyles can’t recall the number of times he’s heard her shout, “Apple’s autosave technology is garbage! It can’t even handle a simple fucking time loop!”) “The guys at the diner get gross sometimes when I’m just trying to study my quantum physics, so once in a while I borrow Abe’s baseball cap and T-shirt and try to get away with being a dude.” She shrugs, like gender is no big deal, which feels oddly comforting at this moment.

Nyles is stuck between a rock and a hard place, the rock being his desire to get the hell out of this dress and the hard place being his reticence to get naked in front of Sarah at this particular juncture in their absurd relationship – so he splits the difference and pulls a pair of jeans on under the flounces of tulle. “I kind of feel like… what even is gender, you know?” he muses, as he tugs the dress off over his head and scrabbles for a T-shirt. “Nothing else matters in here. Why should gender matter?”

“Whoa. Pretty philosophical for this early in the morning,” Sarah shoots back with a smirk. Then her eyes suddenly illuminate with the diabolical genius he secretly loves most about her. “What if you just… were a girl today?”

Already feeling a little out of sorts in the baggy “Palm Springs is for lovers” shirt that Missy bought him lifetimes ago, Niles furrows his brow. “Come again?”

Sarah finally sets down her phone – a rarity these days – and elaborates. “You said it yourself. Gender doesn’t matter in here. It all resets tomorrow. Why not try something out?”

Nyles knows this, of course. He’s tried traversing the day with a French accent, a fake limp, a fake scar, a fake tattoo, a ginger wig, a pet pig on a leash, or a beer can in his hands at all times – literally anything to mix things up and fight against the monotony. But somehow gender was never on his list of potential variables.

“Okay,” he says, and the decision is made.

Sarah glows as she peruses Misty’s suitcase for options. “This is gonna be so fun,” she enthuses. But Misty’s style is more over-the-top #sparklyfemme than either of them ultimately prefer, so she dashes down the hall with an idea in her pretty little head. “One of the other bridesmaids has this _killer_ burgundy dress in her room,” Sarah explains – and then, seeing Nyles’ suspicious look, adds, “I get bored in here sometimes, okay?!”

She’s back in a flash, and once she helps Nyles into the dress and does up the zipper in the back, they’re both staring at him looking… oddly perfect. The fit-and-flare silhouette gives him hips where he normally has only hipbones, and with the addition of a padded bra Sarah pilfered from the same unsuspecting bridesmaid, suddenly there is magic in the mirror. “You look fuckin’ dynamite,” Sarah confirms with a wolf-whistle. “Can we talk about names and pronouns for a sec?”

“Naya. She/her.” The answer comes faster than either of them expected.

“Oooh! Like Naya Rivera, from _Glee_!” Sarah crows. “Remember _Glee_?” The person formerly known as Nyles doesn’t, but that’s to be expected. She barely remembers her own life.

Going to a wedding when your name isn’t on the official RSVP list isn’t as difficult as it may seem. (Naya already knows this, having at various times smuggled into the wedding people as disparate as a local drunk biker, a philosopher specializing in the ethics of time, and a stripper named Candy.) With the requisite amount of lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara, plus one of those WASPy embellished fascinators that people like the Queen of England wear to weddings, Naya is nearly unclockable. No one really cares that Misty’s boyfriend Nyles didn’t show, least of all Misty herself.

“This is Naya,” Sarah says, grinning in a way that could easily be mistaken for infatuation, to everyone they chat with at the reception. “She’s my date.” This isn’t so out of the ordinary; despite all of Sarah’s worst dating decisions being men, her bisexuality has long been a scarlet letter she carries in her family. The black sheep in any given clan is also often the queer sheep.

Naya bows her head, and smiles shyly, and shakes people’s hands, and pitches her voice up a little, and even dances to the Cha Cha Slide when the DJ deigns to play it. She’s thrilled to note that every worn-thin interaction feels fresher and fuller when she’s Naya: men try to buy her drinks (an empty offer when there’s an open bar, but appreciated nonetheless), old ladies coo over her meticulously-applied lipstick (thanks, Sarah), and Daisy the bartender spoons extra olives into her martini with a flirtatious wink.

At the end of the night, Naya and Sarah find themselves sprawled out on the sand in a nearby stretch of desert, as they so often do. Drinks in hand – because, hey, the physiological effects of alcoholism can’t kick in when your body resets day after day – they stare up at the plaintive moon. It’s almost full. It never quite gets there.

“Was that fun?” Sarah asks, and it’s an invitation to answer other questions she hasn’t articulated.

“Yeah,” Naya breathes. “Thank you.” She sits there sipping her beer, tracing her fingers along the hemline of her beautiful dress. “I think I might just… be Naya for a while. See what that feels like.”

Sarah nods and takes a swig of wine. “Whatever gets you through the day.” They both know that in this case “the day” refers to practically their entire lives, stretching out horribly in front of them and behind them. Naya reflects on how, if Sarah decided “tomorrow” that gender was a sham and that she wanted to try something different, that would be okay. It would be expected, even. This time loop business puts everyone in an unusual frame of mind.

“Do I look pretty?” Naya asks the lopsided moon. It’s hard to breathe while she waits for an answer.

“You look gorgeous,” Sarah responds. Her kiss tastes like red wine, and safety, and home.


End file.
